FAQ & usage

Every way to feed Amperlo, every knob worth turning, and the deliberate no-features.

What is Amperlo?

A mobile-first logbook for EV drivers who want the real cost per mile — not the manufacturer figure, not the smug LinkedIn version. Every charge, every mile, every receipt, in one place. Free tier covers one vehicle end-to-end.

Four ways to log a charge

Pick whichever is fastest for the situation — all four land in the same review queue and are parsed by the same AI pipeline.

1. Quick Log — one-tap in the app

Bottom-nav "+". Pre-filled for the "marina overnight" case (source = marina, date = yesterday). Designed to work one-handed in the dark at the boat.

2. Photo or PDF upload

Upload a receipt image or PDF from the charge network. Our AI reads it, extracts kWh, cost, VAT split, network, tariff, discount, ref number. High-confidence rows auto-confirm; the rest wait for you in the review queue.

3. Forward to your receipt address

Every account gets an address like receipts+<token>@amperlo.com. Forward any charge invoice from your email, we pull the attachment and parse it. Only messages sent from your registered email are accepted, so a leaked address can't be abused. Find your own address with a one-tap copy button on the Upload receipt page, or under Settings → Profile ("Receipts by email"). See subject-line grammar below to save yourself a second step.

4. Share sheet — iOS Shortcut & Android

On Android or a PWA install, Amperlo registers as a share target — from any PDF or photo the OS "Share" button includes Amperlo. On iOS, install the "Send to Amperlo" Shortcut once (link in Settings → Tokens) and the same share sheet works from Mail, Files, Safari, everywhere.

Email intake & subject-line grammar

The receipt-mail address handles more than just the attachment. You can annotate the subject line with state-of-charge and mileage, and Amperlo pre-fills those on the resulting draft so you don't need a second trip through the app.

Address

receipts+<your-token>@amperlo.com — token is per-account. Copy yours from the Upload receipt page or Settings → Profile.

Multi-vehicle owners get per-vehicle addresses too: receipts+<token>.<plate-slug>@amperlo.com routes the receipt to a specific car, regardless of which one is currently active in the app.

State-of-charge annotation

Add to the subject — any of these forms are recognised. First match wins.

22-80 or 22 - 80 or 22–80 — start%–end%, dash/en-dash/em-dash. Anywhere in the subject.
22 80 — space-separated pair, but only if it IS the whole subject (otherwise "Instavolt 45 kWh 22 charged" would false-positive).
80 or 80% — end-only, whole subject.

Pairs must sit inside 0–100 and go up (start < end). "23-01" gets treated as a date fragment, not a SoC pair.

Mileage annotation

Adds an odometer reading for the same day. Sanity-checked against the last known reading.

45,123 — comma-formatted, anywhere in the subject.
45123mi / 45123 miles / 45123 m — with a mi/miles/m unit suffix.
22-80 45123 — a bare digit-run AFTER a SoC pair. The SoC pair is what makes it safe to treat the trailing number as mileage rather than a receipt id.

Bare digit-runs on their own (without SoC context or a unit suffix) are NOT parsed as mileage — receipt refs and order IDs would false-positive. Range: 100–999,999 mi. If the value is lower than your last recorded odometer we reject it and log a warning. If it's more than 2,000 mi higher we record it but flag the note for review.

Worked example

Forward the Be.EV receipt from Octopus, edit the subject to something like:

Fwd: Your Be.EV receipt 22-80 45,123

The Fwd: prefix is stripped, 22-80 becomes SoC start→end, 45,123 becomes the mileage odometer reading for the day. The attachment goes through the same AI parse as an upload; the SoC and mileage stick through to review.

Cost-per-mile modes

"What does an EV cost to run?" is three different questions. Toggle at the top of the dashboard:

Energy — just the electricity. The lowest number, the one EV articles usually quote.
Running — energy + service, tyres, MOT, insurance, VED. The number an accountant would use.
TCO — running + depreciation (outright/PCP) or lease payments. The one that tells you what the car actually costs you overall.

Discount & tariff detection

When your receipt shows a discount (Octopus Electroverse 51% off Be.EV, Zapmap Premium 5%, etc.) Amperlo picks it up automatically, attributes it to the loyalty programme, and reports the effective pence per kWh — the number you actually paid, not the headline. Adds up over a year into a real "here's what your subscription saved you" figure.

Same catalog holds known tariffs — Be.EV Mega Plan @ 39p, Instavolt Off-peak @ 55p (8pm–7am), etc. If the parsed rate + time-of-day match one of them, the session gets that tariff tagged automatically.

Data ownership & export

Everything you put in comes back out. Daily automated JSON backups on prod cover the last 90 days; you can trigger one on demand from Settings → Data or via the ev:backup command if you self-host. Restore is symmetric — ev:restore rehydrates the same shape.

VAT-reclaim CSV: public and marina charges track cost_ex_vat + vat_amount + cost_inc_vat separately so you can hand the quarterly total straight to your accountant.

Privacy & pricing

GA4 for aggregate site analytics, and the Meta Pixel for ad measurement — the Pixel only loads if you accept it in the cookie banner (or later via "Cookie preferences" in the footer); reject it and it never fires. Receipt PDFs are stored on private disk and served only to their owner. AI receipt-parsing sends the PDF to our AI vendor for a one-shot extraction (named in the Privacy Policy) — the vendor keeps it only as long as required for their standard log window and never trains on it.

Free tier is 1 vehicle with full core tracking (sessions, mileage, marina blocks, savings vs petrol) — no card, no trial trap. £4.99/mo unlocks AI receipt parsing, email intake, trips, and maintenance ledger for up to 3 vehicles. Additional vehicles: £1.99/mo each. Cancel anytime; you keep access to end of period. See pricing for the split.

GBP, USD and EUR are supported today at signup, with more currencies and countries planned over time. The app also runs in English, French, German and Spanish — set your language any time in Settings.

What Amperlo deliberately doesn't do

ICE support. No mpg logging or petrol receipts. Amperlo compares against petrol via a configurable baseline, but tracks EV cars only. If you have a mixed household we're not the right tool.
Zap-Map / PlugShare integration. We're not a charger-finder. Open Zap-Map for that; feed the receipts to us afterwards.
Car API integration (Tesla, Polestar, JLR). We don't need your car's login. Everything is manual entry or receipt parsing, keeps the auth surface small.

Something not covered here?

Signed in? Open a ticket at /support — you get a threaded conversation and email notifications as we reply.

Not signed in? Email support@amperlo.com — same queue, same response. Include your account email so we can look up your data.

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